Im sure this question has been posed many times but it makes sense to me. I dont hate religious people, Im just fascinated with how they come to specific conclusions on a intellectual level.
WITHOUT NOTING BIBLE SCRIPTURE, please tell me in your own words how you came to the conclusion God exists.
Publius
Nope. It would have to be judged on its merits.
When I was 14 years old and just looking for an excuse to give up, God overwhelmed me with his unimaginable love and forgiveness.
The first time I baptized somebody, the Holy Ghost filled me, body and spirit, with a burning witness of truth.
I have seen miraculous healings in response to prayer -- nothing subjective about them.
Honestly
I was originally raised protestant. My grandfather and uncle were ministers. At an early age, I wanted it to be true and chose to believe it. Over the years I read the bible and observed things in the world and concluded that God is real.
I tried to be a good person but fell into a bad time in my life in my late teens and early twenties. My friends were not that great. When I was 24, I decided to get back into religion and found a protestant friend and started attending meetings though I was not sure this was the right course.
Shortly after, an old friend who I used to surf with and who had moved away, showed up on my doorstep with his new wife and told me about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I new he was Mormon and I had attended a couple of youth meetings when we were younger. He had served a mission to Mexico after he left. This new experience was more than just intelectual. It had a sense of truth about it that was hard to deny. It made so much sense to me and I wanted it to be true. It was a story about spiritual gifts, revelation, angelic visits and living apostles. It was the real church of Jesus Christ led by Him.
I later read the book of Mormon and having been very familiar with the bible, the Book of Mormon brought the bible to life in a way that resolved apparent discrepancies for me. I remember where I was standing when I received a powerful witness from the Holy Ghost that the Book of Mormon is true. I thought, Oh My Gosh! It is really true!.
I am now 70 years old and everything that is good in my life has come because I joined the church. This includes health, wealth, career, family, and especially my sure knowledge that God lives. It sometimes feels sureal. My wife and I got back from serving a mission in detroit a couple of years ago. It was the hi lite of my life. What I found was that those new members who had received the spiritual witness of the Book of Mormon, were strong and did not fall away. When they spoke about it, I knew that they knew. This is the very reason why the Book of Mormon record was preserved for us.
American Catholic
By proof. St. Thomas Aquinas proved the existence of God over 500 years ago through his argument based on the hierarchical order of contingent realities. I know you are going to knee-jerk, and say that's B.S.; but if the premises of an argument are true, and sound, and the conclusion validly follows the premises, then the conclusion is true. No one has been able to refute the argument without using logical fallacies- and you can't either.
When you combine that with a historical tradition that was started 300 years before the Bible, and which is highlighted by the fact that the people starting the tradition opted for horrific death sentences rather than recant their witness, the plausibility of Jesus Christ's existence and works is quite strong. And, no, it's not the same as modern day "martyrs" who drink poisoned Kool Aid, or whatever. The first Christian martyrs would have known the story was a lie, and would have easily saved their own lives by admitting that.
Still, why discount the Bible? It was written by different people, at different times, and in different locations. Would you tell me that you would trust Paul's epistles if they weren't compiled with the other books of the Bible? That isn't very acedemic of you.
Jake
The Bible is infallible when properly interpreted. Bibles properly should have 73 books, as do Catholic Bibles. Devout Catholics tend to like the Douay-Rheims version of the Bible.
It was wrong for Martin Luther to remove eleven books from the Bible, seven from the Old Testament and four from the New Testament, even though he was eventually persuaded to replace the four he removed from the New Testament.
No Chance Without Jesus
God inspired the bible and gave to man to write
YOU are not God
Not sure if you knew that,